innovative meetings Jennifer N. Dienst
The Tao of Crowdfunding
How the Buddhist Geeks used Kickstarter to bring their community together.
W
hen Vincent Horn, founder of the Buddhist Geeks, planned his organization’s
first conference, held in Los Angeles last July, he did what any good Buddhist would do: He took a Zen-like approach.
“We funded the event,” Horn said, “using ticket sales as we went along.” The Geeks, as Horn calls his orga-
nization’s supporters and conference participants, range from video-game developers to CEOs to scientists — all bound by a common interest in the teachings of Buddhism. Horn, a medita- tion teacher, started the organization in 2007 to “find the convergence point between Buddhist meditation and philosophy, and technology, business, science, culture, and art.” His goal in bringing different voices together, he said, is to add a modern, forward-think- ing viewpoint to the Buddhist commu- nity. Think Buddha with an iPad. The Geeks’ inaugural conference
was a success, drawing more than 120 attendees and an outpouring of positive feedback for the two-day hybrid event, which mixed morning meditation sessions with 15-minute, TED-style presentations and intimate workshops. But there was one problem with Horn’s in-the-moment organization of the first conference — the Geeks hadn’t laid any groundwork for funding a follow-up.
“We weren’t interested in bootstrapping again,” Horn said. “We thought about raising money through donors or inves- tors, but that didn’t seem to be in the spirit of what we do.” So the Geeks turned to Kickstarter
(
kickstarter.com), a funding platform for creative projects founded in 2008. How it works: A creator submits a proj- ect or idea to the Kickstarter team — it
38 PCMA CONVENE MAY 2012
can be an event, film, work of art, book, invention, or other endeavor in one of more than a dozen creative fields. If the project meets Kickstarter’s guidelines, the creator outlines the proposed proj- ect on a Kickstarter website page, and backers can pledge financial support in any amount. In return for the pledges, the creator must promise rewards, typi- cally artwork, copies of books — or, as in the Geeks’ case, tickets to an event. The catch: All projects must meet a self-set funding goal within 60 days, or the proj- ect is canceled from the website. The Geeks set their funding goal for
this year’s conference at $20,000, to cover overhead, speaker fees, and venue costs, and to provide a cushion in case ticket sales came up short. The rewards the Geeks offered varied depending on the pledge amount — $50 pledges received a limited-edition T-shirt, for example, while $250 pledges received an early-bird ticket to the conference, a T-shirt, and other benefits. Offering items in addition to tickets allowed the organization to raise funds from back- ers who weren’t necessarily interested in attending the conference, but wanted to support it. The experiment was a hit, with 150
backers pledging $25,571, far exceed- ing the Geeks’ Kickstarter goal. Horn expects attendance to double at the event, to be held at the University of Colorado in Boulder on Aug. 9–11. “The Geeks were able to come about because of micro-patronage,” Horn said. “We like doing things that involve all of our community members, and it felt like the moment was right to use Kickstarter.”
Contributing Editor Jennifer N. Dienst is a freelance writer based in Charleston, S.C.
+
Enlightenment The Buddhist Geeks surpassed funding goals for their event in a way that matched their philosophy.
BREAKOUT
Kickstarting Events EventStir (which is so new that the site was running a private beta version at press time) applies the crowdfunding concept to social gatherings. Anyone can propose and organize an event, and promote it using Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media platforms built into the application. As with Kickstarter and Groupon, the event is only a go if a certain amount of money is pledged. Because participants are more likely to attend an event they have already paid for, this model is a hedge against one of the biggest risks of networking and social events that are organized online — low attendance. For more information, visit
eventstir.org.
.
ON THE WEB For a primer on using Kickstarter — along with the story of how a video-game designer raised millions for a game that was rejected by industry investors — from the
SecondAct.com website, visit
convn.org/second-act.
Innovative Meetings is sponsored by the Irving Convention & Visitors Bureau,
irvingtexas.com.
PCMA.ORG
ILLUSTRATION BY BECI ORPIN
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116